What happens during a crash with feet on the dashboard?
QUESTION
Hi John,
In the past, you have made several videos on how people should drive their cars - how they sit, hold the wheel, etc. But what about their passengers? Especially the front seat passengers.
I work in traffic control here in the Western District of Victoria and as such I am out there standing on the road as part of my job. I get to see a lot of cars and how their occupants travel in them. And I see far too many front seat passengers with their feet or knees up on the dashboard. In fact, over the past 12 months, I have estimated this to to be around 3-5% of all cars on the roads around Geelong and its districts. That's far too many.
When I was learning to drive in the mid to late 70's, the then VicRoads/TAC equivalent had adds in the papers showing what happened when a car doing 60kph slammed on the brakes whilst the passenger had his/her feet up on the dash. I can still remember it clearly even today. In 0.7 of a second, because of the way the body is positioned with the feet up, when the brakes are heavily applied, the passenger's body slides forward and down, the momentum pushing it under the seat belt. The feet have nowhere to go up there, so with the body shift, it causes the knee caps to snap, then as the body continues to curve under the seat belt, the spine then snaps.
This whole episode is aggravated even more if the car impacts something like another car or a tree, or at a higher speed. And now that cars have front airbags, when they go off, it will drive the passengers legs back into their face. IF the passenger survives the incident, they will never walk again!
I have tried to point this out to those that I see and get the opportunity to talk to, but I see far more that I cannot get that chance.
I rang the TAC here in Victoria and they said they do not have any funding available in the next year or two to consider doing such a campaign.
So I am wondering if you could possibly put your creative mind to doing something along these lines in a video. I feel that if I can manage to save one person from spending the rest of their life in a wheel chair, I will have made a difference.
Love your show. I look forward to more of your regular reports issuing from the Fat Cave. Keep up the good work.
Geoff
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ANSWER
Hello Geoff,
I share your concern over this issue, and I thank you for your kind words regarding my reports.
Here are some resources I’ve managed to find illustrating the effects of sitting in this utterly stupid and glaringly ignorant way; hopefully this will serve to remind some people of this particular risk.
Not only does the passenger have to live (presuming they do, obviously) with the horrific injuries, life-long pain and subsequent medication, but the driver also has to harbour guilt for the rest of their lives that they didn’t do something or more to prevent it from happening. (That’s assuming the driver lives also - the newer the vehicle the greater the chance of survival, obviously).
Pro tip: The passenger should always sit close enough they can put their feet on the firewall in order to brace and push their hips into the seat to stabilise themselves, in the same way the drive should do this with the brake pedal when they push it as hard as they can in an emergency braking situation.
Sincerely,
JC
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